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How can we improve the Windows platform?

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Allow developers to implement an interface(s) on a user control and "submit" that instead of just filling in a tile data structure. This will make tiles truly "live" and open up the live of WP7 to new applications. This is also completely secure because the runtime can analyze the class (and it's IL) being submitted. A bevy of restrictions can also be heaped on the said user control in order to maintain performance and not sap battery life. Let Live tiles be live, please.

Hi Ananth, we absolutely understand the desirability of this feature. However, our team must carefully balance the power and flexibility that we offer developers, with the consistency and performance of the most prominent screen on the device: Start.

We are currently exploring ways to host a light-weight XAML engine in a memory constrained way, but there are a number of technical limitations making this a non-trivial problem. Memory usage on 512 MB devices, resolving ValueConverters that live within an apps’ assembly, exposing storyboards/animations in a consistent/performant way, are just a few examples. We look forward to updating you once we’ve been able to draw a definitive answer!

When you create a tile dynamically, it is common to want to save it as a Png file so that it uses transparency (so that it respects the theme accent color).
However, there is no built in method to save a WriteableBitmap as a png.
There is however a nice extension to save it to jpg, but that doesn't help if you want to use transparency to leverage the theme accent color in your tile.

I think many apps that need to generate a tile dynamically will encounter this issue.

One of the things that makes Windows Phone unique is all the different custom live tiles that developers could make by rendering UIElements into images and updating the live tile with them. In Windows Phone 8.1 WinRT, there's a new rule that developers can only render UIElements that are in the VisualTree. This means that developers can't render UIElements from a background task, which is very important to us developers who want to provide a custom live tile for our users.

Please remove the restriction that a UIElement needs to be in the VisualTree.

It would be nice to see Windows Phone move to optional vector based icons instead of static bitmaps.

This would allow the application bar (or appbar) to resize if say HD screens were added.

Ideally, users would only need 2 icons for the marketplace: 'Tile' (contains the application name), and 'List' (just the icon for the app list). Appbars could be created at 48x48 and resized as needed.

I know this is a pain on developers that are not designers or have designers, but an option would be nice time saver for the future. Currently I know of developers creating deep link tiles from XAML in their application, so the idea isn't too far off.

This came up while talking to other developers at a few talks/meetups (not because I created the largest vector based creative commons icon pack for Windows Phone that many of you use already).

It would be nice to see Windows Phone move to optional vector based icons instead of static bitmaps.

This would allow the application bar (or appbar) to resize if say HD screens were added.

Ideally, users would only need 2 icons for the marketplace: 'Tile' (contains the application name), and 'List' (just the icon for the app list). Appbars could be created at 48x48 and resized as needed.

I know this is a pain on developers that are not designers or have designers, but an option would be nice time saver for the future. Currently I know of developers creating…

We Frequently use Bluetooth, Wifi, Flash Light, Flight Mode, Hotspot, GPS etc. if there was a way to implement Live Tiles as "Toggle Buttons" to turn on and off these functions from home screen, it would be very helpful :) Because as of now I have to go to setting to do these things :(

At the moment there's no way for an app to know if its primary live tile is visible or not. As half the point of my app is the information on the live tile, I'd like to have a polite reminder show every so often if they haven't pinned it, but I simply don't know whether they have or not.

One vital feature I truly miss is the availability to create custom category hub tiles. Since I've downloaded tons of handy apps from marketplace it is getting pretty hard to find the apps since i sometimes forget their names making the A-Z list more or less useless. The lack of categories truly bothers me. The feature doesn't need to be complicated at all really. Just a simple UI similar to the A-Z list you get with WP7 out of the box, but with the apps of your choice in it. Great community WPDevs! Thanks in advance & for amazing OS!

There are some apps which simple are needed but not needed for quick access. Like Adobe PDF Reader or Phone Settings or development test apps. My idea was to add any group like already available for contacts to sort and categorize apps. In that case every user can choose which apps are important to have direct access by tile or which are in a minor priority or which have very less priority to have direct access to it.

Make it possible to optionally declare a function OnClick() for live tiles, such that this code is executed when the live tiles is presed without leaving the home screen. Think about WiFi toggles, music controls, unmute/ mute etc.

In short, now that we can have multiple tiles, sure, it's great that they can open the app. But why not let us flip the tile instead (Note: The mail tile would *always* open the app.) Think of a 'Stocks' app where you see the price and change on the front, then tapping it shows the graph on the back. Perhaps a double-tap opens the app like they do now.

If I want to update a Live Tile from my own App I can't draw it's background image on the phone, because if I store it to IsolatedStorage i'm not able to get an URI for it which I could provide the StandardTileData-Object with.

Continuing my prior post about allowing us to explicitly flip secondary live tiles with a tap instead of launching the app, this request would allow such an action to explicitly update the tile by triggering a function call in a background task.

For instance, normally a stock price tile updates every 30 minutes via a background task, but if you tap it, the quote updates instantly.

Or perhaps you have a tile that shows you where you are--restarurant or wherever--and you simply tap it to check in there. No need to open the app.

Since it's user-initiated, it wouldn't drain the battery.

Perhaps these two ideas are combined and you define which action to take when creating/updating the tile... Flip the tile, execute a background task (or both), or simply launch the app like normal (possibly with deep toast.)

That would really make LiveTiles 'Live' which now, they kind of aren't and were by *far* the biggest disappointment when we saw the actual SDK.

Coming from iOS, when we did see that, we scrapped two apps we were going to release on WP7. (A third was scrapped because of the inability to do location tracking in a background task more frequently than once every 30 minutes, which is sort of the same 'stale data' issue as here.)

Continuing my prior post about allowing us to explicitly flip secondary live tiles with a tap instead of launching the app, this request would allow such an action to explicitly update the tile by triggering a function call in a background task.

For instance, normally a stock price tile updates every 30 minutes via a background task, but if you tap it, the quote updates instantly.

Or perhaps you have a tile that shows you where you are--restarurant or wherever--and you simply tap it to check in there. No need to open the app.

I suggest having an option like (UnPin) on any live tile to (Update) it. With feature user can run background service to update live tile when he need which can help developers to give instant feedback on live tile when user request.

My game icon was designed to have a transparent background, but when I published it and saw it listed in the Game Hub, the transparent background was not filled with the user's theme color as it would have been in the app list or when pinned to the home screen.

Please add support for icons with a transparent background in the Games list.